The NEM Foundation is endorsed by an international network, compiled of a wealth of experience in IT, entrepreneurship, business processes, trading, property and asset development, international management...

The NEM Foundation is endorsed by an international network, compiled of a wealth of experience in IT, entrepreneurship, business processes, trading, property and asset development, international management and academia. The business’ ethos is to provide NEM’s blockchain technology platform to enhance enterprise whilst being run by the people, for the people. NEM’s team provides this through an array of support and education, from training events and service providers to technical support for the ecosystem.

Has customizable assets, One-minute average block times, First with localized spam protection, Offers encrypted, unencrypted, and hex messaging, Zero monetary inflation, Relatively large egalitarian distribution, Due to its incentive to hold, it has a great prospect for growth

Overview

NEM is a special peer-to-peer digital currency written in Java and JavaScript, and was launched along with its blockchain on March 31, 2015. It was created with the aim that in time, it will gain an unprecedented global acceptance because of its special features. It was created by someone known as UtopianFuture, a former Bitcoin Talk Forum user.

NEM is primarily a financial blockchain solution which can be used for payment, clearing, and settlement in a fully controlled and private environment. It has creative applications like Apostille, which is a solution for notarizing documents, updating them, and changing their ownership. NEM also exists as a private chain which is called "Mijin", which is being tested for blockchain capabilities by more than 140 institutions in Japan, including Hitachi.

The main inspiration behind the innovation was NXT, an open source cryptocurrency and payment network. The initial plans for NEM was to create a fork of NXT, but this was eventually dismissed in favor of a completely new database. This means that NEM has 100% original source code. The software used to power it had also been tried by some already established financial institutions in Asia (majorly Japan) and also few financial organizations worldwide.

Initially, the NEM project was not entirely legal when it started, although that has changed presently. There was a call on people already on the Bitcoin Forum to participate in the project and contribute to the development of the project. But as time goes on, willing ones came out to support, and as the project blossomed, those who participated in the crowdfunding were able to redeem the stakes they paid for.

Because it wasn’t legal at the time, some left and there were fears over others about their commitment to the project. A deadline was set. At the end of the deadlines, all unclaimed funds were devoted to the development of the digital currency NEM, and that was how it became operational eventually.

One of the exciting features of this digital currency is the enhancement of its blockchain network, which includes the proof-of-importance algorithm, encrypted messaging, multi-signature accounts and the EigenTrust ++ reputation system. And as true of many digital currencies currently in the market, it is decentralized, and its issuance is based on a fixed decentralized peer-to-peer consensus. NEM utilizes XEM as its native currency token.

Looking at some other digital currencies, we notice that they function based on the proof-of-work algorithm, but NEM utilizes Proof-of-Importance. That is, an account's importance is determined by how many coins it contains, and the number of transactions made to and from that account. The benefit of this is that the NEM infrastructure server will run independently of the NEM community client. This allows the lightweight computer (also known as Light Client) that works to connect the system to the server, to operate fully without having to run a full copy of the NEM blockchain.

The proof-of-Importance algorithm also allows the NEM system to timestamp Transactions. Its block time is about 1 minute or a little less. And you necessarily don’t have to own a lot of coins to for to start a block.

How to Buy

Since mining is not available for XEM, the best way to get XEM is by Exchanges. You can use BitCoin in exchange for XEM. You can trade on the following Exchanges:

Poloniex

Bittrex

BTER

BTC38

Trading

There are two ways in through which you can trade with your NEM coins. The first way is to directly pay retailers who are known to accept NEM as a means of payment for goods and services offered with the NEM coins which you possess.

It will be interesting to know that a few merchants and retail outlets, especially in Asia are already accepting it. There are a couple of merchants in Europe and America who also joins this category.

A second way is by using a trading online exchange. With the knowledge that you know what a trading exchange is, here is some trading exchange where you can do transactions with NEM. They include Poloniex, Bitrex, Hitbtc, Yobit, Bter, Cryptopia, and so on.

Storage

In the time of writing, the supported wallet for NEM is NanoWallet. It is a full-fledged cryptocurrency wallet built with HTML and JavaScript. Due to these languages being used, this wallet can run on any platform with a web browser. The wallet communicates with any NIS in order to relay transactions to the rest of the network while also receiving information about network events.

You can get the lightweight wallet, which does not require downloading the entire blockchain like other platforms. You can also get the full-featured wallet and sync a local copy of the blockchain.

Mobile wallets are currently in development and are compatible with both Android and iOS.